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This site has a review of the characters in the Thomas Harris novel Red Dragon. Since the first season of the TV series Hannibal is set four years before Red Dragon, this blog may contain SPOILERS for that show.

Hannibal Lecter

RED DRAGON"Dr. Lecter is not crazy, in any common way we think of being crazy. He did some hideous things because he enjoyed them. But he can function perfecfly when he wants to.""They say he's a sociopath, because they don't know what else to call him. He has some of the characteristics of what they call a sociopath. He has no remorse or guilt at all. And he had the first and worst sign - sadism to animals as a child.""But he doesn't have any of the other marks, he wasn't a drifter, he had no history of trouble with the law. He wasn't shallow and exploitive in small things, like most sociopaths are. He's not insensitive. They don't know what to call him. His electroencephalograms show some odd patterns, but they haven't been able to tell much from them.""He's a monster. I think of him as one of those pitiful things that are born in hospitals from time to time. They feed it, and keep it warm, but they don't put it on the machines and it dies. Lecter is the same way in his head, but he looks normal and nobody could tell."

Eight years ago Hannibal Lecter was working as a an emergency room doctor and he treated a patient who five years later he killed in the style of an illustration which
commonly appears in European surgical texts in the Middle Ages (The Wound Man). This was his sixth canonical victim and by this time Lecter was practicing psychiatry. Following this victim he committed his next three murders in nine days.

Will Graham was investigating some background information on the victims, and interviewed Lecter about his sixth victim. Graham described Lecter's office as:"a nice office. Antiques...some very old medical books on the shelf above his head." Based on those medical books Graham identified Lecter as the murderer, and apprehended him, but not before Lecter stabbed him with a
linoleum knife, and Graham shot him.

He is the author of article on surgical addiction in The Journal of Clinical Psychiatry. Dr. Chilton says that "the medical journals still publish him, but it's just for the freak value of his byline". But he also recognises the standard of Lecter's work since he says Lecter has written "some brilliant pieces for The American Journal of Psychiatry and The General Archives."

"Dr. Lecter's eyes are maroon and they reflect the light redly in tiny points."

"He is a small, lithe man. Very neat."

"HANNIBAL" (Four years before)
Lecter is Forensic Psychiatrist who is also moonlighting as a killer.

Dolarhyde's Story

About Me

I am a Computer Science Lecturer, Educational Researcher, and Futurist, in the School of Computing, Dublin Institute of Technology, Ireland.
I care passionately about the portrayal of computers in the media, and have written several academic papers on this topic.
email: Damian.Gordon(a)dit.ie
web: http://www.damiantgordon.com